Across the Pond

The last full day that we were in Ireland, we went to see Malahide Castle in the morning. It was one of the more interesting castles in that it was restored and very castle like plus it had beautiful grounds. We first took a tour of the castle. This was interesting because we learned the history of the castle and how it was built in stages. Earliest room of castle...

On May the 9th we got up and headed for The Giants Causeway. We didn’t know much about it, but it was famous, so we decided to see it. Less than a mile from our room for the night, we came across a small castle called Kilclief Castle. It wasn’t open, but it shows you how common castles are in Ireland. The Giants Causeway is in Northern Ireland, which is...

We had to backtrack just a little to go to the Bunratty castle and village. We thought we could go there the day before, but it got too late and we saw the Cliffs of Moher instead. We got an early start that morning and drove to Bunratty Castle. Since it was Sunday morning, we didn’t see any restaurants open for breakfast, we got food at a gas station. It was...

The third day in Ireland, we got up and went to Blarney castle. I’m sure you’ve heard of the Blarney stone, that is so famous. You’re supposed to be able to kiss it and it will bring you good luck. Well, it’s not at all what I expected. The Blarney stone is a stone at the top of the castle that looks like other stones in the castle. Not that...

Ireland! We loved it! We were there for 8 days and I made the comment after about 4 days, “I could live here!” It was beautiful and very green. There were lots of stone ruins and stone fences. Lot’s of sheep and in the whole island we saw about four policemen. I wondered about that and then I realized the people were so nice, they didn’t need...

I went down to our farm in Chile again at the end of January. The weather was absolutely beautiful. I was there for a little over two weeks. Most days were in the seventies and it didn’t rain the whole time I was there. One morning it was cloudy and one day was partly cloudy. Other than that, it was blue skies all day long. One day, I went to the birthday...

I want to talk about the other things we saw and did in Italy. We landed in Milan. We booked a nice older hotel in Milan for the first night. Even though it was November and we had driven through a snowstorm to get to the airport, it felt more like October. The leaves were yellow and starting to fall. The next morning, we went to Sforza Castle in Milan. It was very...

We spent a day in Rome. Three days would have been more reasonable. There is so much to see and do in Rome. I noticed how busy of a city it was. There was traffic all over and you really had to be careful where you were going. We chose to take a Hop-on hop-off bus to see the sites. Marty wasn’t driving, so she remarked about how beautiful the city was. Since we...

I think one of my favorite places we’ve visited on our travels is the Amalfi Coast. It ranks up there with Meteora in Greece. It had a great mixture of natural beauty and cool buildings. The Amalfi Coast is a coastline you can drive along where it is largely cliffs and steep mountains, but they built little towns and other buildings along there. The road itself...

I think it’s odd that we call it Italy, but there they call it Italia. Venice is actually Venezio. If that’s what they call them, why do we change the names of their country? We may never know. Anyway, we took a trip to Italy in November. Italy is very romantic and has a lot of ancient buildings. It’s got a lot to see and we only had time to see...